How to Become a Priest

You’ve been discerning priesthood for months or even years. You’ve talked to family, friends, your pastor, your spiritual director, and the vocations promoter. You’ve been on several vocation retreats and visited a couple of religious communities.

Finally!

After all this time and energy, you’ve chosen to answer God’s call to serve His people as a priest.

The first thing you need to do is contact your vocations promoter and tell him that you’d like to begin the application process. He’ll set an appointment to visit with you and go over the process for application.

Identifying the correct vocations promoter depends on whether you have discerned priesthood with a diocese or a religious community. Read last week’s post to better understand the difference. Each diocese and religious community should have its own promoter/director of vocations.

Once you contact that person, you can officially begin the application process.

Generally, you’ll need to get a physical exam, a psychological exam; provide high school and/or college transcripts; write an autobiography; provide letters of recommendation, and sit for an interview with the vocation board.

If all goes well, you’ll probably visit the seminary your diocese or desired religious community uses for priestly formation and meet with the rector and a couple of the priest-faculty members. What kind of seminary you attend and which one is up to your bishop or those responsible for formation in your religious community.

In religious communities, the equivalent of a bishop usually is called a major superior. In some instances, such as in the Dominican Order, he is called a provincial.

Formation and the Seminary

There are two kinds of seminaries in the U.S. – minor and major. The minor seminary is the Church’s equivalent of a four-year, undergraduate college.

The major seminary is grad school, and you’ll start work on your Masters of Divinity (M.Div.), the degree required by American bishops for priestly ordination. Some diocese or religious communities may require you to earn a Master of Arts in Theology (M.A.), especially if you intend to pursue a higher degree after ordination to the priesthood.

Since the M.Div. is a grad degree, you will need a bachelor’s degree or its equivalent to enter full-time seminary formation. The American bishops’ blueprint for seminary training is a document titled, The Program of Priestly Formation (PPF).

This document lays out in detail the spiritual, human, intellectual, and pastoral qualities our bishops expect a seminarian to cultivate while in formation. It also lays out the academic requirements for starting and finishing the M.Div. Before beginning the master’s degree, you will need 36 credit hours in philosophy. There are two ways to earn these credits if you don’t already have them:

Minor Seminary

If you have just graduated high school or have no formal education beyond high school, your bishop may send you to a minor seminary to earn an undergraduate degree in philosophy or theology. This will take four years. If you are an older candidate who needs the philosophy credits, or you already have an undergraduate degree in a non-humanities field (engineering, pre-med) your bishop may opt to send you to a pre-theology program at a major seminary.

Major Seminary and Pre-theology Program

Major seminaries offer a two-year pre-theology program that covers all of the philosophy requirements of the PPF. In this program you will take courses in the standard Western philosophical tradition (Ancient, Medieval, Modern, logic, philosophy of God, etc.) along with courses in the Catechism, homiletics, spirituality, and Latin/Greek).

Some of these programs are non-credit, but some – like Notre Dame Seminary in New Orleans – award the B.Phil. at the successful conclusion of the program. Once you have completed your philosophy requirements and received the approval of the priestly formation team, you can move on to the M.Div. program.

In rare cases, an older man with no formal education beyond high school can enter seminary formation as a “non-degree” candidate, completing all of the coursework in both the pre-theology and M.Div. programs in six years without receiving a degree upon completion.

Also in rare cases, a bishop or religious superior may opt to send an otherwise qualified seminarian to Rome for studies. American seminarians studying in Rome live at the North American College and take their academic courses at one of the pontifical universities in the city [The Angelicum (founded and operated by the Order of Preachers – the Dominicans), the Gregorian (founded and operated by the Society of Jesus – the Jesuits), or Santa Croce (entrusted to the care of Prelature of the Holy Cross and Opus Dei)]. If you are chosen to study in Rome, you will be studying for two pontifical degrees: the S.T.B. (undergraduate degree) and the S.T.L. (graduate degree).

Fr. Francis Orozco, O.P., graduates with his Master of Divinity and Master of Arts in Theology. With him is Fr. Tom Condon, O.P., Prior Provincial of the Province of St. Martin de Porres.

In both minor and major seminary, you will participate in a “formation program.” Beyond the basic academic work that any university degree program requires for graduation, you will be actively and intimately involved in preparing yourself for priestly service.

At its most basic, the PPF asks seminary formators (priests in charge of formation) to accomplish two goals with each seminarian: 1) shape him into a man capable of serving the Church sacrificially; and 2) polish his unique character and gifts so that he will experience constant joy in service as a priest. In other words, the bishops are asking formators to shape you into the best version of yourself without losing who you are as a person.

This is a process somewhat akin to cutting and polishing raw gemstones! Formators are charged with taking a young man, identifying his gifts and weaknesses, challenging him to excel where he is gifted, and helping him to perfect his imperfections. Our bishops do not want corporate robots in clerical suits nor do they want free-agents who do their own thing. They want fully realized, faithful, pastoral men who play well with others and are capable of being spiritual fathers without becoming tyrants.

Fr. Thomas More Barba, OP – not a tyrant!

With the help of your formators, your professors, your peers, and your bishop, you have four to six years to demonstrate that you are well-formed enough for priestly ordination. Of course, formation does not end at ordination, but the foundations must be laid while in seminary.

So, you have the required philosophy credits and you’ve been approved to start your M.Div. studies. What happens now? Like another academic program, you start classes. During your first year you will be known as a “First Theologian” (T1) within the diocesan seminary or, possibly, a “First Year” within your religious community’s house of study. The latter designation comes after a member of a religious community has completed a Novitiate.

While in seminary, your academic work will take most of your time and energy. You will be given a schedule of classes that include a wide variety of subjects – dogmatic theology, scripture, homiletics, moral theology, and pastoral theology. Each class will have different requirements depending on the professor, but almost all of them will require a substantial amount of reading and writing.

Priestly Formation

Along with your classes, you will be involved in a number of formation activities designed to develop and perfect your gifts for the priesthood. The PPF identifies four dimensions of priestly formation: spiritual, human, intellectual, and pastoral. Each dimension is embedded in all the others and reinforces the sacrificial nature of the priesthood.

Spiritual Formation: This dimension focuses on your relationship with God and your duties as a baptized follower of Christ. Formators will note your participation in the liturgical activities of the seminary, especially your daily attendance at the community Liturgy of the Hours (Morning and Evening Prayer) and Mass. You will also be guided by your formation advisor in choosing devotional practices consistent with the priesthood, and your spiritual director will help you with choosing spiritual reading. The bishops want their priests to be faithful spiritual fathers to their people, so you will be guided in developing a healthy spirituality that focuses on your ministry as a mediator between God and His people.

Human Formation: This dimension focuses on your relationship with others, particularly your acquisition and cultivation of the moral virtues (prudence, fortitude, temperance, and justice). Many seminarians find this the most difficult dimension to excel in because they have absorbed the ambient culture’s moral standards. In this dimension, your formation advisor will challenge you on the basics of good manners, grooming, and conversational skills. However, he will also challenge you to achieve a deep self-awareness of your affectivity and how you interact to a variety of people. A good priest must be an excellent listener and an emphatic guide.

Intellectual Formation: This dimension focuses on the relationship between your mind and the Truth. It is common among seminarians to confuse “academic work” with “intellectual formation.” The purpose of intellectual formation, however, is to shape your mind to think with the Church and apply what you have learned to concrete pastoral situations. Your studies are designed to acquaint you with the intellectual treasures of the Church as a unified explication of scripture and tradition. Like most seminarians, you will likely see your grades as an indicator of whether or not you are succeeding as a seminarian. This is a mistake. While your grades are one indicator of your success, they are not the whole of your formation. Bishops and formators like to see good grades, of course, but they also know that not everyone in seminary is going to be another St. Thomas Aquinas.

Pastoral Formation: This dimension brings the other three dimensions into practical focus; that is, your formation as a priest is deeply influenced by how well you have developed spiritually, humanely, and intellectually. Any deficiencies in these dimensions will affect your ability to minister to God’s people. You will also be evaluated on how you minister to your fellow seminarians. Formators look for leadership qualities – initiative, diligence, goal-orientation – in their charges. You may be challenged by your formators to “step-up” in providing a lead to your classmates in initiating service projects or completing existing projects started by earlier classes. More than anything else, the question of pastoral formation is: can this man be a pastor who leads people to Christ? All of the other dimensions of formation prepare you for answering this question.

With these four dimensions clearly in mind, you will embark on a journey of self-discovery and development that only begins to scratch the surface of who you can be in Christ’s service. Seminary formation simply starts the process of transformation. No seminary can prepare you for all of the contingencies of real-world priestly ministry or the changes that will occur in your relationship with God and His people.

And just who are these men charged with forming you and how does this evaluation process work? Each seminary is established and supported by the local bishop as a school of formation for future priests. In the context of a religious community, this may be a director of students (called a Student Master in the Dominican Order) who reports on each seminarian (or Student Brother’s) progress to the local religious community and major superior.

Once you enter the seminary, you will be assigned a priest-formator who will act as your advisor in the external forum. You will also be asked to select a spiritual director who will advise you in the internal forum. The distinction between external and internal forum is important because we all need the time and space to work through our difficulties. Basically, the external forum encompasses everything not included in the internal forum; that is, all public behavior and expression. The internal forum is best understood as the time and space reserved for spiritual direction and confession. Internal forum discussions are meant to prepare you for disclosing personal difficulties in the external forum. Despite the misconceptions, the internal forum is not meant to be the place where your deepest, darkest secrets are kept safely hidden from the external formation team.

Docility to formation requires transparency, and the internal forum is there to help you work through how and when you might disclose information to those who will later vote on whether you are prepared to be ordained a priest. Your formation advisor will present your formation progress once a year to his fellow formation advisors and your bishop or major superior.

While in studies, you will petition your bishop or major superior to be instituted as a Lector and Acolyte. While many laypersons participate as either readers or altar servers at Mass, Lectors, and Acolytes are the official titles for those who have been specifically entrusted with the ministries by the Church.

Towards the end of your second year, diocesan seminarians will petition for candidacy for ordination. If the formation team recommends you, your bishop will accept your petition, and you will be admitted to candidacy during a special Mass. For members of most religious communities, candidacy is dispensed in favor of the seminarians’ approval for and profession of perpetual (i.e., lifelong) vows.

During the summer after your second year, you will be enrolled in a clinical pastoral education (CPE) program. The CPE program is usually an intensive summer program where you work as a chaplain-trainee in a hospital.

Br. Carl Joseph Paustian, O.P., is Ordained a Deacon

Towards the end of your penultimate year, you will petition for ordination to the diaconate. With the positive recommendation of the formation team, your bishop or major superior will accept your petition and schedule your ordination date.

Normally, seminarians are ordained deacons in the summer after their penultimate year of study. Some seminarians serve an internship for six months before returning to the seminary to finish their final year. Others fulfill this internship concurrent with their final year.

Toward the end of your final year, as a transitional deacon, you will petition for ordination to the priesthood. Again, the formation team will evaluate your formation to this point and vote on whether or not it will recommend you for priestly ordination. If the vote is positive and your bishop or major superior receives your petition positively, you will be scheduled for ordination to the priesthood during the summer.

In all of this hard work to get to priestly ordination, it is vital to remember that your vocation to the priesthood is meant to serve the Church. Just as you have a duty to respond to God’s call, the Church has a duty to evaluate that call and decide how best to make use of your gifts.

While the process may seem long and laborious, it is meant to shape you into the best version of yourself that you can be at that moment. Formation does not end with ordination; it only changes. How you serve the Church in your priestly office depends entirely on how you understand your personal relationship with God as His minister. If you see yourself as a servant to His people, you will flourish. However, if you see the office of priest as merely a career – like being a doctor or lawyer – then your joy in service will be incomplete.

The road to the priesthood is easy for those dispose toward learning. It is long and hard for those who believe that they already know it all.

The process of becoming a priest can sound intense…and maybe a little overwhelming.
But every priest has done it. And we’ve taken it one step at a time.

If you want to hear more about how to become a priestor simply ask questions about vocations, click here.

Questions About Becoming A Priest in 2018?

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We are the Dominican Friars of Memphis, part of the worldwide Order of Preachers founded in 1216. We have continuously served Memphis since 1845. We are part of the Province of Saint Martin de Porres in the Order of Friars Preachers serving the Southern United States.

This vocations website is part of our community’s Holy Preaching – inspiring others via spoken and written word to answer God’s call to be a priest, brother or friar.